


Four Rivers, A Vision of Inheritance

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 01:50:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11347398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived atThe Basement, which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onThe Basement's collection profile.





	Four Rivers, A Vision of Inheritance

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Four Rivers, a vision of Inheritance by Dreamerlea

28 October 1998  
Four Rivers, a vision of Inheritance  
by Dreamerlea ()  
Rated R. If m/m interaction bothers you, well then, I really don't know what to say. It is doubtful that there are any spoilers, except perhaps for a story of mine ;-). Call this an unauthorized member of a universe that doesn't yet exist.   
For Kix, just because.

* * *

There was a sort of enchantment in the idea of faith; that the car would lead down to the perfect road, and somehow they would find themselves standing before the answer of the month, and at last their minds would still and they could say "here". The sentiment was bewitching from its origin, and Mulder knew it could not be - Alex was driven.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Home."

And that was all they spoke for many hours, for many days as Mulder watched the greenery close around him and wondered where on earth this man called home. He wondered if the vines were original, or if they were aliens, invading the land around them until all he could see was this mat of green, waves of it, frozen in place like a preternatural sea.

Alex didn't stop but for gas, and he never asked Mulder to drive. It was the evening of the second day when Mulder realized where they were. He spoke up then, but Krycek just looked at him and showed him a smile that wasn't a smile. He didn't stop until they reached the beach, and even then he pulled onto the sand until the car protested, spinning its wheels so the whiteness flew everywhere.

"Damn treads," Mulder said lightly as Krycek threw the car into park and leapt out.

The house would have been quite a masterpiece in the early seventies. It was all in dark wood and purple-shaded windows at odd, cloistered angles about the circumference. It sat, almost crag-like, over the water; waiting on slender dark legs, looking out over the sea.

Krycek padded towards the house. Mulder ran after him, hardly caring when his loafers were swallowed by the burning white sands.

"Alex," he panted when he reached him. The sand had turned into dunes without the effects of civilization and population to stamp it down, and he was forced to half-wade to the younger man's side. "Alex, this was your home?"

Alex simply stared and made as if to speak. Mulder waited, but all he received was a soft ease of breath from his companion. The breeze came from the water, brushing sand into Mulder's hair, and he heard nothing but the grit of the crystals against one another and the tiny lapping sounds on the shore. 

It was enchantment, to be sure, but Mulder would not break it. It was, perhaps, the answer for the month. The silence here was different, thinner than in the mountains. There, it wrapped around you, and hushed even your own thoughts. Here, Mulder could hear echoes that were about to drop.

"Did you think I lived in a shack?" Alex asked suddenly, surprising him.

"I -- didn't know." Mulder hardly knew what he said.

"But you didn't ask. Of course, a man like me, I couldn't have had a very good upbringing. Those who come from money don't grow into hired guns."

"I didn't think that."

Alex shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I want to be inside."

Within, it was no different. Dark, splendid surroundings, to contrast, perhaps, with the fiery light of the beach and the glistening green of the water. Mulder automatically pictured Alex as a boy in this house; wandering, half-blind from the light, down the windowless hallways and running across the earth-toned tiles with feet red and sandy from the beach.

Krycek hurried down these halls now, and Mulder was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of a door and an instant drop in pressure. It *was* rather stuffy. He went after Krycek, but paused in the doorway of what could only be the master bedroom.

The roof slanted down towards the shore-ward side of the house, almost in offering, and the light here was softer, perhaps from the way the beams extended out over the balcony. The sliding glass doors were open, and the damage from the water and salt was evident on the cracked wood of the floor and the ratty, torn curtains. The bed was brown, and seemed to have grown out from the deep walls of the house. Alex lay on the bed, spread across the flat and salt-stained coverlet, a pillow of deepest maroon pressed tightly to his face.

He was asleep.

~X~

A long time ago, he had run from the dark house, letting his young lungs feel the burn of salt-tinged oxygen as he left long, ragged footprints in the sand. Faster, and faster, and farther and farther, until the house was nothing more than a black, oily blemish on the endless stretch of pure, crystalline white. There was a line of rocks there, a wave breaker. Alex climbed out as far as he dared, and looked to the south, to where the sea curved around the land and the eastern river joined the rest in its endless circle. Then he continued, and his eyes traveled further than his feet and conscience allowed, and in his visions he could see himself springing lightly over the surf at the mouth of the land. The water sat so still there, it was easy to see that no great force had ripped the earth apart, and that instead the water had come back to claim what was its own. He would stand like that for a long time, until at last the sun in his eyes would push him inland and northward, to where the windows of the house reflected darkly the light from the sky. And Alex knew then that there would never be a time he could escape to the south.

~X~

Mulder lay on the couch in the central room in the house and listened to the way the water moved. There were few waves, he noticed, on the Gulf. But the tide was evident. No matter where you went, there was always that mark of the heavens on the face of the Earth.

No matter where you went.

Still, here would be another month, another chance for them to pretend to forget, until the very tide drove them away to a new place, another vision of earthly splendor that would too soon crumble in the bitterness of could-have-been.

He wondered why Alex could sleep. He wondered why he hadn't climbed into bed with the younger man after he had removed his companion's clothes and arm. Alex hadn't even woken then, and Mulder, understanding only that he should leave him alone, had retreated to the couch and curled up with an old chenille blanket that had somehow survived the ravages of time and tides. He wondered why Alex had left this place for a life of terror. He wondered if the shore sounded so clear and rhythmic to the boy who once slept on this couch. He wondered if the house grew closer to the shore, as he slept. And then, as he finally slipped into something resembling sleep, he wondered why the moon so desperately sought the sea.

~X~

A long time ago, he had sped through the dunes on a little motorbike, scattering sea oats in his wake and ruining the habitats of who knows how many birds. The day Alex discovered the effects his jaded attempt at rebellion was having on the hidden nest of a sea turtle, he chose the roads, which at least moved faster. In the evening, the light would turn bluish and Alex would ride away from the west, the sun burning the air behind him as he looked towards the approaching night. The bridges to the mainland arced over the water like stone dolphins, and Alex would stare at them, wishing he dared for once to cross onto those roads, age and authority be damned. Night after night, he'd turn back, and the sun would have him half-blind by the time the large dark shell of the house would come into sight. Inside, he would accept the indulgent smiles and bland questions that ever carried the threat of expectation, and wonder if the time would come when he could escape to the east.

~X~

Mulder's skin was damp with salt by the time he opened his eyes. It was late morning, and Mulder had learned long ago not to look at his watch. There was no point in counting hours.

He rolled off the couch and groaned slightly. Tonight, he was going to be back in the bed, Alex's melancholy notwithstanding. Mulder made his way down the hallway to greet the younger man, but, again, stopped dead in the doorway to the bedroom.

Alex was gone.

Mulder hissed a small curse and ran from the house. The car was still where they had left it yesterday afternoon, and appeared untouched. 

Dammit, Krycek, is it too much to ask that you *tell* me where you are heading?

A short investigation that Mulder found vaguely satiric revealed footprints leading right to the water's edge. But he saw no swimmer, as far as he dared to look. A moment later he was in the water, stirring the surface into tiny whirlpools with his fingers. When the shore was only a brilliant band of silver behind him he turned and began the trip back, a long unused desire for violence blossoming in his brain.

Late that afternoon, a storm swept in from the west, and Mulder watched in angry silence as the sand whirled about the porch of the house, and lightning flashed in wide orange stripes down to the horizon. Little rain fell, but the clouds lingered, disgruntled and impotent, and sent down thunder and fire enough to chill Mulder to the bone.

Alex was all right. He wasn't fool enough by half to be out in this. He had wandered down the beach, and was probably waiting out the storm in some other empty house. He wasn't on the water. He couldn't be. Yet Mulder raised the binoculars again anyway, because he believed in the impossible.

Lightning flashed from behind the clouds, and the western sky shone with purple and orange for one brief moment.

And he saw it. Like a dove at midnight it lay against the backdrop of the furious sky, enough to make his blood boil and his heart race with fear. A sail.

In seconds he was on the beach, storm be damned, and searching again for that speck of white against the blackness of the horizon. Damn him. It would be a while before he got back, even with all the wind. It would be a while before Mulder could slip his hands around Alex's neck...

...and throttle him. Krycek, if you ever--

A particularly violent bolt of lightning sent him running back from the water's edge. The air crackled with static, and all was smothered with the acrid, lighter-than-air scent of fresh ozone. Mulder looked out over the sea and raised his hand to the back of his neck, where his hair stood out over gooseflesh. It was closer than he thought. Get back here, get back here now. Please, God, get back here.

The clouds gave up later in the evening, and Mulder sat in the near blackness of the beach, waiting. The larger, darker shape of the house loomed up behind him, and Mulder turned on the generator that he had spent half the afternoon setting up and lit lamps in the windows of the house.

Poor bastard should have to find his own way back. That would teach him. He could have died out there. He deserves a good scare. Mulder, despite this, left the lights burning, and looked up at the sky, because he was sick of the water.

Now he was sick of the water! Nothing left to hate, he supposed. There was no moon tonight, and the night shone with that eerie, blue-on-black clarity that occurred only after a storm's cleansing. Mulder mused that he liked Alex's constellations better than the ones he had learned as a boy, and that no one made better pictures in the sky. He rarely looked, anymore, and he knew that Alex hadn't since that night, but that didn't stop Mulder from believing that Alex was the only one who had seen it correctly. The stars were perfect silver, and, if Mulder didn't stare, he could make out the smokiness of the Milky Way, or maybe that was just a cloud. Maybe that was just his mind. All he knew for sure was that it was endless, and it was impossibly high, and it was utterly, utterly empty.

Mulder wasn't aware that he was screaming, and was barely conscious of the fact that he had leapt to his feet and was hurling great handfuls of sand into the air, for all the good it did. He had never been able to hit the sky as a boy, and he wasn't going to now. He let the sand drop from his hand, and listened as it sifted into the ripples on the shore. In his life he had loved perhaps three people. One had been stolen by the sky, and one by the earth, and if this one was lost to the water...

Mulder left the thought unfinished, for then, from the sea, came another flash of fire. Once, twice it blinked, and Mulder raced towards the house, and flipped the breaker twice.

~X~

The sea turtle puts a lot of faith in the earth, and isn't often rewarded. She trusts that the earth will shelter her eggs from the ravages of man and nature, from the tides and the storms and the scavenger birds. She trusts that her offspring will act in accordance with what the turtles have been taught by the earth for all of eternity, and will move to the sea at the precise, perfect stage of the moon. She trusts that they will somehow conquer the waves and make it out into the deep water and away from the dangers of the nest. Only a few out of hundreds ever succeed, and she never knows. And, as for the children, they all choose the unknown danger of the sea rather than bear the ills that exist on the shore. Because it is their nature. Because it is their fate.

Alex knew this once, long ago when he drove away in the early morning, when the light was a glorious mixture of peach and lavender and the house sat in its lonely decadence on the very edge of the world. He knew that it was the destiny of the turtle to escape to his natural element, and that this time, he would make it. And they would never know. As each of the young turtles, he didn't heed the statistics which warned of the low probability of survival. Those were for the others. Alex was strong, Alex was driven. Alex had found the perfect time, and took his chance, and escaped to the north.

~X~

He was washed upon the shore, and Mulder caught him as he fell into the sand, and dragged him away from the clutch of the waves.

"Don't you ever..." he hissed into the younger man's salt-spiked hair. "Don't you ever, or I'll kill you myself. No, forget the boat."

"I couldn't, I had to, Oh, god, Mulder, there is no escape. We are going to live and die like this." He grabbed at Mulder's shoulders, and tried to lift himself into some sort of upright position as Mulder pulled him ever-further from the solace of the shore.

"No," he said violently, and shook Alex until he opened his bleary eyes. "We aren't. We are going to live and die in the way we choose. We make the decisions, Alex. We choose."

"You chose Scully's death?"

Silence, and Mulder looked over his companion's shoulder to where the water was claiming the boat. The sail was ripped, and Mulder could only imagine what had happened on the water. Alex was red even in the darkness, and a list of dangers ran through Mulder's head. Hypothermia, dehydration, sunstroke, electrocution. "No I did not." He paused, but continued before Alex could gather enough energy to speak. "And I do not choose yours."

Alex seemed to collapse then, to fall against the older man in utter exhaustion. Mulder knew well enough that it meant that he would no longer fight against being rescued. He began to help him back to shore, ignoring the hisses Alex made whenever his skin brushed up against anything but the cool night air.

"I screamed at the sky tonight," he said softly.

"I don't even look anymore," Alex replied after a while. "I can't bear to. It would almost be a relief, to see Them now."

"Do you have a death wish, Krycek?" Mulder snapped. "Do you -want- to leave me alone?"

Silence. Mulder waited.

But the only answer was the soft susurration of the water as it flowed over the sand.

~X~

The room was bowed in supplication to the sea, offering up the occupants of the bed as they lay beneath the stars. Mulder was still, waiting for Alex to speak, to apologize, but Alex was still silent. 

A shooting star passed through the square of sky in the window above them, and Alex started for a moment, but then sank back into himself. The heat rose from his legs and chest and Mulder resisted the urge to turn away from him towards the cooler side of the bed. He spoke.

"It's amazing that such a little thing, just a lump of empty rock, can be so beautiful."

Alex nodded, but said "Empty things are never beautiful, Mulder. They're simply awful, and we have no way to express that wonderment except in beauty. Nothing is really beautiful anymore."

"You are," Mulder answered, and kissed him, but Alex remained still beneath his lips.

"What a perfect answer," the younger man whispered bitterly into Mulder's mouth. "So like a script. I'm in despair, but you can save me with a kiss. How romantic."

Mulder looked down at him. "Dammit, Krycek, why did you come here? It's not making you happy."

"I'm not expecting it to."

"Then what are you expecting? What do you expect when you run away?"

Silence. It didn't matter. Mulder knew the answer the second that the question formed on his lips. There was no point in running if you never got away. There was no escape from their lives. 

"Escape," Mulder said, and sighed.

Alex nodded, then seemed to sink into himself.

No, not this time. You aren't running this time. "Alex."

The younger man shuddered. "This is the gateway. This is the beginning. This is the place-"

"You are sick."

"I am mad, and so are you."

"No, no, Alex. No." Mulder kissed him, and ignored his shivering mouth, ignored his feverish brow. "We are not alone. You convinced me of that."

"I lied. I'm good at that," Alex replied, whispering dry words into Mulder's mouth. Mulder tried for a moment more, then leaned back.

"Don't believe it," he mumbled. "Don't believe it, don't believe it." Mulder felt his eyes burn and tears fell on Alex's reddened chest. 

Alex didn't speak, or reach towards him. Mulder put his head down on the younger man's stomach, and kissed the over-warm flesh. He ran his hands over Alex's legs, and reflected that his lover was molten beneath his skin. He burned, and between the fever and the tears, all Mulder could feel was this man's scorched body, searing his mouth, his cheeks, his arms.

Alex did not move, and after a while Mulder gave up. He lay on his lover's thighs, and breathed cool whorls of air across his torso. "Shall we die then?"

No answer. Several minutes went by, and Mulder almost fell asleep. Then he felt Alex's hand in his hair, running through the strands and caressing his scalp. "I don't want *you* to die, Mulder. I couldn't have that."

And later: "You don't know. I went all over, and there was no way out. Every time I tried, there was no way out. I had to come back to the beginning, and try the final direction."

He paused for a moment which might have been an hour. Mulder was half-asleep. "I went to the east, to the south. I ran away to the north, but I found only death."

He was delirious. Mulder was sure of it. But he listened. "So I took you here. I wanted to escape to the west."

A silence as long as the sky.

"There is no escape, Mulder. There's nothing in the west but fire and water."

Mulder closed his eyes, and felt their burning.

"And there's nothing here but..."

Mulder dared to breathe again. "Alex." 

"Kiss me, Mulder."

Mulder obeyed, and covered Alex's body with his own. Alex's fire seeped through his skin, and Mulder touched him with hands still tinged with sea water tears.

They lay awake for a long time, and watched the stars move through the emptiness. 

There is an old story which says that the world is bounded by four rivers that run in the cardinal directions, and thus the earth is an island. The rivers together circle the land, and create the endless ring of Ocean. A man can stand at the edge of the world, and look past the rivers into the abyss, but he cannot leave. He must simply put his faith into the world he has been given. There is no escape. The course of the rivers always leads back to the land. That is the only answer the man shall receive.

And yet, there is a sort of enchantment in the idea of faith.

End

~X~

In medias res. Utterly. Dreamer offers her most abject apologies, and hopes she wasn't too oblique. Ease her mind at . Please.


End file.
